TIME – Foreign News

Publisher Henry Luce, supported by Editor-in-Chief Tom Matthews, appointed Whittaker Chambers acting Foreign News editor in mid-summer 1944, when John Osborne went on a two-month assignment in Europe.

In the first issue as acting Foreign News editor (August 7, 1944), Chambers published the article “Mission to Moscow” about Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Premier of the London Polish Government.

Chambers worked himself toward another major heart attack, and Luce had him step down in the Fall of 1945.

Chambers’ last major piece was an essay so controversial that TIME reprinted it triumphantly several years later: “The Ghosts on the Roof” (March 5, 1945, and January 5, 1948).

Almost seven months to the day after the essay’s second publication, Chambers would appear under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and give testimony that would launch the Hiss Case.